Don't listen to the majority - listen to your body

Right, first and foremost, I am not trying to say that I have a magic formula for weight loss. It does take hard work, determination, bad days, good days and a whole lot of time. That being said, I am mainly writing this to try to motivate others, and let them know that it is possible, and that it can be done without any of the extreme diets that are currently touted around social media regularly.

Back in November 2019, I was at my very heaviest. I weighed in at 17 stone 8, and quite frankly, I was miserable.

A bit of background into me, I am an avid sports watcher, player and enthusiast, and it genuinely hurt me the fact that I couldn't play sports due to my weight. It wasn't just my sports that were affected. I was embarrassed to go on nights out, or if I did, I would wear long baggy clothing to hide my weight and would drink so much, I would forget about how miserable I really was.

Something needed to change, as my health, my mental health and my whole life was beginning to be affected, by my consistent moping, eating, drinking and not caring about anything.

There was a day in December, I couldn't tell you why or for what reason, that I decided enough was enough. With the advice of a friend who is a PT, I decided that HIIT was going to be the best way to try to get back into shape, along with eating less.

I started off doing 10 minutes a day for the first two months, along with having a smoothie (frozen fruit, yogurt, honey, juice) for breakfast and lunch, with a banana as a snack, and having a more anything goes attitude for dinner.

I stuck with this plan, gradually increasing the amount of exercise I was doing as I got fitter physically, until I was doing around 45 minutes a day of HIIT (mainly pressups, burpees, situps, that kind of staple exercise).

After 3 or so months of consistency, the weight was dropping off. I thought I looked great, and weighed in around the 15.5 stone mark (roughly 2 stone down).

I continued to mix up the HIIT training, while also now trying to hit the 10,000 step mark in a day consistently, while sticking to the same diet plan (not even really counting calories at this point).

A few more months went away, and I found online videos of workouts on Instagram, that I used regularly during the first UK lockdown. When the UK went into this lockdown, I also learnt about 'Calorie defecit'. What this basically means is that as long as you eat less calories than your body burns, you are going to lose weight, no matter what you eat. You can have chocolate, beer, carbs, ANYTHING! And if you are careful enough during the week, you can even have a cheat meal or two with alcohol on the weekend!

As it came to the end of lockdown I was under 13 stone for the first time in about 10 years, and was feeling fit, and healthy, and most importantly my mental health was so much better! I could go out of the house without worrying that people were looking at me or judging me.

Why have I told you all of this, you ask?

Quite simply, because you can do it too. I'm not looking for a congratulations, or a pat on the back, I just want to motivate others, and let those who don't think it is know, that it is achievable, and you can still enjoy your life while achieving it too.

I didn't follow any extreme diet plan. I didn't give up carbs. I didn't give up alcohol or chocolate or takeaways. In fact, for the majority of my weight loss journey, I would drink every friday and saturday night (pretty heavily) and would have at least one takeaway during that time.

All you need to do, is make sure that you are putting in the extra effort during the week to allow you to have those days on the weekend. This means, sticking to your calorie defecit goal, making sure your not taking unnecessary days off from working out and not panicking if you have a bad meal every once in a while (just don't let a bad day turn into a bad week and you will be ABSOLUTELY fine!).

I believe that a lot of people consider weight loss, try something too extreme and give up. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes a whole lot of will power, determination and grit. You will have good days, you will have bad days. You will want to cry, you will be happy with progress. At the end of the day, if you put your mind to it and work hard enough, you can achieve the results you want. I am proof of that. If you had told me a year ago that I would be 12.5 stone, happy, fit, playing football regularly and enjoying my life as much as I am, I would have called you a liar. But here I am 5 stone down, and enjoying my life 100 times more than I was 12 months ago.

YOU CAN DO IT.

I urge you to go on the journey I did. It will be the best thing you ever do.

If you are on a weight loss journey, or you are thinking of starting but don't know where to start, please get in touch with me and il give you as much advice as I can. We are all in this together.